Slitherine

The battles not being imported to Field of Glory 2.

OK, so, two situations -

1. I have a pretty good sized army, about 30 units and I'm fighting in small frontage region. For some reason my units don't fill out the frontage which gives the opponent an extra shot for free at the edges. I have units in the 2nd line that are legions. Why aren't they filling out the frontage? This is getting the units at the 2 edges killed and sometimes they are legions.

2. I have had some battles where the Italian Provincial are in the front line and my legions are in the 2nd line. Now, I get that legions aren't that effective in some regions. These battles were hills. Why are my legions on the 2nd row and a really weak unit is on the front? I lose the battle and the pursuit kills a number of my good units.

1. If you're fighting in hills, those have two unit slots at the edges that are cavalry only. In that case, you need to bring some cavalry of your own to fill those slots. In other small frontage terrain, the game shouldn't be placing anything in reserve until the whole frontline is filled out.

2. I don't believe legions are penalized in hills, so should not take a hit to their deployment priority there either. However, legions that have sustained damage might get moved to the reserves in favor of fresh troops, even if the latter have weaker base stats.

These are questions that I also had in the past, and figured them out reading on the forum/internet. Soar gave good answers, but I bet many (new) players have these questions, and will not (and should not) try to search the web to understand what is going on (and even so, I still don't completely understand). The source of these problems is players should always understand in-game what is going on, and if they don't, it only means the game is not intuitive. And usually the less realistic a simulation is, the more counter-intuitive it becomes. So how could the game be improved? My guess:
1. How units are positioned on the battlefield is definitely not realistic, resulting in the misunderstanding. FOG2 has realistic positioning, and does not have this problem. So an obvious solution would be to position the units more realistically, at least the flanking units. I still do not understand why in a 5-frontage pass in the mountains, 5 of my non-cav. units reach to fight the non-cav. enemy, but only 3 if the enemy had 2 cav units? Does anyone know?
2. The game should explain somehow why it sometimes changes unit arrangement on the battlefield. I also get the impression that the fights I lost when weaker unit are positioned in front, would have been won if the best-attack units would have been, as usual (even if left with 1 hit only). Am I wrong?

lostangelonline wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2019 12:50 pmI still do not understand why in a 5-frontage pass in the mountains, 5 of my non-cav. units reach to fight the non-cav. enemy, but only 3 if the enemy had 2 cav units? Does anyone know?

That doesn't sound like it's working as designed. Only plains, hills, steppes and deserts are supposed to feature cavalry-exclusive deployment zones.

lostangelonline wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2019 12:50 pm ...
1. How units are positioned on the battlefield is definitely not realistic, resulting in the misunderstanding. FOG2 has realistic positioning, and does not have this problem. So an obvious solution would be to position the units more realistically, at least the flanking units. I still do not understand why in a 5-frontage pass in the mountains, 5 of my non-cav. units reach to fight the non-cav. enemy, but only 3 if the enemy had 2 cav units? Does anyone know?
2. The game should explain somehow why it sometimes changes unit arrangement on the battlefield. I also get the impression that the fights I lost when weaker unit are positioned in front, would have been won if the best-attack units would have been, as usual (even if left with 1 hit only). Am I wrong?

1) it follows the rules as amended for the last patch. That generally improved the choice of combat/support units and kept some slots in clear/hilly terrain for cavalry. The rationale for that came from the player base in a long and well argued thread. There are no cavalry only slots in mountains so a bit unsure what you are seeing to come to that opinion. In FoG2 you set up your own army so not sure what the relevance of that is?

2) as above, plus there is a random element and yes it tries to protect already weakened units. Best approach is not to keep on using a stack where you expensive core units are already worn down.

Good answers, although still think we should be allowed to set up are units as we see fit. I certainly wouldn't leave the edges open, if allowed to set up my own units.

Mountains, I understand. I try not to take legions into Mountainous areas for obvious reasons. Hills, not so sure about the cavalry thing.

Those edges don't represent the same thing as the other squares they represent wide ranges of space that only cavalry can properly cover and can use to outflank if other cavalry aren't countering that maneuver. Self placement might still be a good idea but it wouldn't solve that problem. You're either short of frontline-specific troops or don't have enough cavalry.

Ledo is correct.

The battle placings in Empires are the simulation of a battle, don't think of it as the real placements of units. It is the overall effect that should be considered.

The reserved spaces on the wings represent the effects of cavalry in a battle. If there are no opposing cavalry then cavalry are free to attack at will and will help turn a battle. There are only some types of battlefield where cavalry can operate effectively, so this is why there are no reserved spaces for cavalry in Forests, wheres in a wide plain cavalry can be very effective in flanking the lines and so this is why there are 2 reserved spaces per wing.

In the example where there aren't enough troops to fill the line then the cavalry are placed in the line too. This isn't necessarily what would happen in a real battle, the cavalry would probably be used to counter the enemy cavalry, but the additional line troops would have an advantage and would probably do well in flanking, so the net effect is the same. T

Very informative thread, thanks everyone!

Thanks guys, I've done some SP testing and I realized I was wrong. I thought (maybe because frontage is not split between non-cav + cav) that non-cav frontage was dynamic depending on whether there were any cav units (which was what I tried to describe as unrealistic); but it is not (which is realistic, and I am relieved). Does anyone have a list of actual non-cav + cav frontage for each terrain type? From what I've seen (with /"terrain defense"):

Plain: 10+4/0
Arid Steppes: 8+6/0
Hill: 6+2/1
Strongly Fortified: 6+0/3
Mountain: 5+0/2
Alpine: 3+0/3(?)

As for the topic at hand:
1. It would be easier to understand if cav units, once they beat enemy cav units, would move ahead (like skirmishers at the beginning of the battle) to simulate flanking. What do you guys think?
2. Might be better for the army to have a "Protect weakened units" toggle (like Assault, Pillage, Retaliate)? If disabled, best units will always be at the front. (though it might be realist for the general to not have this option, as it is now, as weakened units always refuse to fight?) What do you guys think?

from memory, if I recall Desert is 8+8, in other words use lots of cavalry (even lights) before fighting in that type of terrain

I never really thanked everyone for the answers on this thread. I have used the information and have done much better. I always keep at least 6 cavalry units in my armies, now. 4 of them hopefully, are heavy/cataphracts, so they aren't at a disadvantage.

Battles have been much better. I stopped building any Italian Provincial infantry because they are horrible and since they aren't in the army, the slots on the frontage get filled up with better units, almost exclusively legions.

A force should have a number of the best infantry types your faction has, Legion, Phalanx, etc., equal to the terrain frontage value. A number of support types, again equal to the frontage value, should also be present. Light cavalry are fine in the support role, but the best I've found are the Phanagerian Horse archers with a missile attack value of 9. Special flank tiles were added at player request. In open terrain, two of your faction's best cavalry can fill these on each flank, or four total. In other terrain, only one on each flank, for a total of two. My stacks for non-open terrain usually consist of 8 Phalanx, 8 Phanagerians and 2 Heavy Cavalry with a few regular infantry for sieges. Good Luck!

I've seen other good cavalry called Rhyxlabian? Or maybe Phrglaxian? I don't know the names are jaw breakers, but they are good horse as provincial units.

The Alani have good missile cavalry, too.